DCU students are set to face another referendum next year. A committee has been put in place to assess and amend the current Students’ Union constitution.
The constitutional review committee was put in place after Fionn Daly put forward the idea of the class rep council system being out of date and inhibiting communication between students and members.
The entire process is in its very early stages and any change to the constitution is likely to be delayed until next year when a referendum will be held on the changes proposed by the new constitutional review committee.
Paul Doherty, Students’ Union President and committee member, explained what they aim to do and how they’re going about it. “We hope to have a much broader view of what the constitution should contain from a student’s perspective.
“Any recommendations will be going back to CRC to be approved so we can draft a new constitution. It’s not a huge issue but is obviously very important. It was discussed at CRC and some reps believe it is all very confusing and should be swapped out for a much more student-friendly version”, Doherty told The College View.
Fionn Daly is the class rep who proposed the mandate which led to the review committee being established. He told The College View why he thinks things should change.
“When I first started going to CRC in first year it was a real effort to understand what was going on.
The rules and protocols for holding meetings seemed outdated, overly-complicated and full of legalese”, he said.
“It’s my guess, that an easy-to-follow, jargon-free, system of holding meetings will improve Class Rep engagement. The current system isn’t exactly user-friendly. It requires a two-hour training session for members of the SU executive.”
The mandate that has been accepted by CRC says it is the review committee’s job to ‘to investigate the adoption of more efficient, user-friendly and modern methods of conducting meetings and communicating with members of CRC and students’.
It goes on to say that the main aim of all this is to make it easier to get things done, to enable better communication and to encourage greater participation. In the early stages of this year CRC meetings have been poorly attended.
If a referendum is held this will be the 3rd change to the constitution in the past five years.
The constitutional review committee is made up of nine members, including three returning officers to the SU and Paul Doherty.
Adam Higgins
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